The anatomy of a lung includes multiple airways. As a result of certain genetic and/or environmental conditions, an airway may become fully or partially obstructed, resulting in an airway disease such as emphysema, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and asthma. Certain obstructive airway diseases, including, but not limited to, COPD and asthma, are reversible. Treatments have accordingly been designed in order to reverse the obstruction of airways caused by these diseases.
One treatment option includes management of the obstructive airway diseases via pharmaceuticals. For example, in a patient with asthma, inflammation and swelling of the airways may be reversed through the use of short-acting bronchodilators, long-acting bronchodilators, and/or anti-inflammatories. Pharmaceuticals, however, are not always a desirable treatment option because in many cases they do not produce permanent results, or patients are resistant to such treatments or simply non-compliant when it comes to taking their prescribed medications.
Accordingly, more durable/longer-lasting and effective treatment options have been developed in the form of energy delivery systems for reversing obstruction of airways. Such systems may be designed to contact an airway of a lung to deliver energy at a desired intensity for a period of time that allows for the airway tissue (e.g., airway smooth muscle, nerve tissue, etc.) to be altered and/or ablated. However, energy delivery through these systems to the airway tissue is not always uniform due to the contact between the systems and the tissue. Uniform delivery of energy to the airway tissue is important for enabling consistent treatment and lowering the impedance level of the tissue. There is accordingly a need for an energy delivery system that enables uniform contact between the system and the tissue of an airway.